Embracing integration and complexity: placing emotion within a science of brain and behaviour

ABSTRACT

The present paper addresses conceptual issues that are central to emotion research. What is emotion? What are its defining characteristics? The field struggles with questions like these almost constantly. I argue that definitions, and deciding what is the proper status of emotion, are not a requirement for scientific progress – in fact, they can hinder it. Therefore, “emotion” researchers should strive to develop a science of complex behaviours, and worry less about their exact nature. But for interesting behaviours, is most of the explaining that is needed present at the level of isolated systems (perception, cognition, etc.) or at the level of interactions between them? I suggest that the level of interactions is where most of the work is needed. Accordingly, I advocate that it is important to embrace integration, and not to strive to necessarily disentangle the multiple contributions underlying behaviours. More generally, it is argued that we need to revise models of causation adopted when reasoning about the mind and brain. Instead, a “complex systems” approach is required where the interactions between multiple components lead to system-level – emergent – properties that cannot be isolated or attributed to more elementary parts.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion
• cognition
• definition
• brain

Acknowledgements

The author’s research is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (R01 MH071589 and R01 MH112517). I’m grateful for constructive feedback from Sander Koole and Klaus Rothermund.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Luiz Pessoa http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4696-6903

Additional information

Funding

The author’s research is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health [grant number R01 MH071589] and [grant number R01 MH112517].